ASH Preview with Dr. Bruce Cheson

ASH is just about over now. I may sift through a few more abstracts to see if there's anything good that I missed, but we're in that phase now where presenters have been issuing press releases about whatever work they presented at ASH, crowing about the great things they found. (And they deserve to crow.)

One thing I missed posting, though, was Medscape's annual preview of the ASH conference. As always, it was presented by Dr. Bruce Cheson of Georgetown University.

As you may know, I'm very fond of Dr. Bruce Cheson(also known on Lympho Bob as Lymphoma Superstar Dr. Bruce Cheson). I like his work a lot, and I appreciate his thoughtful and critical look at research. he always manages to give me a different perspective on things.

And he's also really entertaining. I think the last time I posted something about him, it was a video of a presentation he gave at a dinner, and he brought his glass of wine right up with him to the podium. (It turned out he had a reason for that, but it was for a good reason.)

 His 2014 ASH preview was just as informative, and entertaining. You can find it here, though you need to sign up for a Medscape account in order to view it.

If you don't have or want a Medscape account, I'll say that the entertaining part came right away. The ASH meeting was in San Francisco, so he opened his video preview by weaving in the lyrics from Scott McKenzie's 1967 summer of love hit "If You're Going to San Francisco."  I hope the good doctor did indeed find some gentle people with flowers in their hair at ASH.

In the video, Dr. Cheson's discussion of Indolent Lymphomas shows he is excited about the phase II trial of Ibrutinib, and about results from the R-squared trial (Rituxin and Revlimid), which wasn't presented at the ASH conference, but which should be coming soon. He also is interested in some of the work that has been done with PET scans, which, as he notes, have been controversial lately.

And if you need a little more entertainment, I liked his Dr. Cheson's video from last year on the virtues of hummus (especially the title).

All in all, I think ASH was a success for Follicular Lymphoma this year. No huge breakthroughs, but lots of smaller things that will help us in the future -- near-term and far-term.